The truth about the Carpenters, Wiggles and the haka

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The fearsome haka had humble origins in a kumara pit, swears Ian Matthews.

The fear of the unknown is entirely natural. If we are faced with a threat about which we have no understanding, it only serves to emphasise our unease. So with the All Blacks playing in Sydney tomorrow night I thought I'd check out what the Kiwis are getting excited about when they rip into the haka.

It seems that this legendary sporting challenge relates the story of a warrior who ran away from his enemies and sought refuge in a pit in which the locals stored their sweet potatoes. All right, so that's not exactly an auspicious start for a war chant, I'll grant you. Hiding in a pile of kumara doesn't exactly conjure up the Anzac spirit, but let's give our hero the benefit of the doubt; I'm sure he felt it was the best thing to do in the circumstances.

The first couple of lines reflect his uncertainty about whether he's made the right decision. Roughly translated into the vernacular, it comes across as, "Damn, I'm really buggered here - nah, she'll be right." This indecision seems to go on for some time. Then, in the middle stanza, we are told that someone, described as being exceptionally hirsute, opens up the pit to release our hero. Quite why we need to be told that his rescuer is overly hairy is something of a mystery (perhaps the translation should read "woolly" rather than "hairy"). But our man in the pit describes him as someone "who has made the sun shine for me again".

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Now hang on a minute. Isn't that a line from one of the Carpenters' hits a few years back? Has our hero's time among the tubers caused the love light to sparkle in his eyes? Could Baz Luhrmann maybe turn this into a musical? Alas, too soon we come to the last couple of lines.

And this eye-popping, apoplectic, spittle-flecked culmination of tribal hatred translates as (and I swear this is true), "Up the ladder we go to the top and the sun is out."

So is that it? This terrifying sporting war chant comes across as nothing more than an attempt to persuade us that discretion is the better part of valour, describes the Kiwi propensity for equivocation and ends with a line that wouldn't sound out of place at a Wiggles concert.

However, that's not to say that we Aussies don't have our own problems. Waltzing Matilda, sung spontaneously and with genuine patriotic fervour, will bring a lump to the throat, a tear to the eye and will stiffen the sinews and put fire into the bellies of the men representing our nation. But someone has to tell John Williams that his sing-along version is nothing more than the sporting equivalent of Row, row, row your boat. I'm surprised he doesn't get different parts of the stadium to start singing it at different times.

So please, John. Not this weekend. But can someone just let George and the boys know what these Kiwis are really on about?

Readers are invited to apply wit to anything that makes the blood boil. Send 500 words, with day and evening phone numbers, to heckler@smh.com.au. Submissions may be edited and published on the internet.